While most Americans go through great lengths at summer picnics to keep ants and crickets away from the snack table, Chirps, a new product from Six Foods, puts the bugs directly into the snacks. Laura D’Asaro, Merly Natow, and Rose Wang are three former roommates who are giving the term “crunchy” a whole new meaning. The trio recognizes that bugs like crickets are a staple in diets around the world, but in the U.S., they are usually only consumed on accident or on a dare. The three Harvard graduates believe that their product, Chirps, will make insect-ingestion a normal activity here in the States.
The three women teamed up with professional chef Geoff Lukas to create a new line of products made from cricket flower. Chirps cricket chips have three times the protein and half the fat of potato chips. Chirps are made from cricket flour instead of wheat flour, so they are gluten free. Chirps’ creators also added beans and rice flour to the cricket mix to create a dark tortilla chip. If that didn’t sound appetizing enough, they will be available in three flavors: Hickory Barbecue Chirps, Aged Cheddar Chirps, and Sea Salt Chirps.
Six Foods doesn’t want to limit the cricket flour to just chips though; the team also created Chocolate Chirp Cookies, for the cricket-crunchers who prefer their crickets softer and sweeter.
Wang told the Harvard Crimson that during the trios’ separate trips abroad as undergraduates, each of them discovered the benefits of insect eating. Wang said, “When we came back from our trips, we were blown away by the potential that insects have.”
A Kickstarter campaign the women started to fund Chirps exceeded their goal of $30,000 by over twice as much after over twelve hundred backers pledged to support Chirps. SixFoods.com is already accepting pre-orders for what the women hope is more than just a novelty. Crickets are so nutritious that the trio hopes Chirps will bring cricket flour from “crunchy” to mainstream.
Is mainstream America ready for chips made of ground-up crickets (aka “Chirps”)? http://t.co/6hDWbI1o7Q pic.twitter.com/vQGGaTETQR
— Modern Farmer (@ModFarm) May 16, 2014
@ModFarm @RachelFeltman My question about rearing insects for food is, what are they fed on? Are we creating another feedstock nightmare? — Gideon Lichfield (@glichfield) May 16, 2014
